‘Good, thank you,’ says Dad. Somehow he seems to know Kemp is holding out his free hand to him, and they shake hands. Dad is smiling. He likes Kemp and is probably happy bumping into him again. I am not. The very sight of him is the undoing of me. ‘Well, a bit tired, actually. It’s been an entertaining morning.’

A silly part of me hopes Dad will mention I met a man this morning, and that he asked me out, then I realize this would be totally embarrassing.

‘It’s always really busy there,’ agrees Kemp.

I’m looking at Dad; I don’t want to look at Kemp. I have to look back at Kemp.

‘You’ve got ice cream on your beard,’ I say.

‘Oops!’ He wipes his chin with his hand. ‘Gone?’

‘Gone.’ This exchange feels way too intimate. Like we’re still good friends. I once wiped sauce off his chin with a napkin, in a restaurant, just like Dad used to wipe ice cream off mine. It felt natural, nice, even though I had wanted to lean forward and kiss him. I hate that I still have that urge, looking at him now. That I just want to kiss him.

‘Oh,’ he says, reaching into one of the back pockets of his jeans with that same free hand, ‘this is that Diane Arbus biography you lent me.’ He hands me a rather battered-looking paperback and reaches back into his pocket again, ‘and this is one of your socks. You left it in the houseboat.’

‘Oh,’ I say, surprised, staring at the blue and yellow sock in his hand. ‘Seven years ago? You should have just chucked it.’

He shrugs. ‘It’s nice. It has stripes. I thought you might want it back.’

‘Oh, right. Well, I don’t have the other one any more so …’

‘I’ll chuck it,’ says Kemp with a grin, tucking the sock into his front jeans pocket. He stands and looks at me. At Dad. Then back to me. ‘Hey, did you get caught in that rain shower earlier?’

‘Yes,’ I say, running my thumb along the top edge of the paperback. I wonder why Kemp is talking about the weather again. We never talked about the weather or remarked how ‘busy’ places were. We talked about movies and television and art and photography and politics and life. He said he liked to hear my opinions on things, that I often had a different slant, and these different slants made him laugh. But I don’t want to remember all that. He mentioned the rain shower, so instead I think of Salvi.

‘Dreadful, wasn’t it? Still we needed it – well, the grass did, anyway.’ I look at him, bemused. What grass? ‘Well, I won’t keep you,’ he says, popping the last bite of ice cream in his mouth and screwing up the wrapper in his hand. ‘I was just passing and thought I’d say hi.’